The request for public help comes as the city is reeling from a recent burst of violence, including a shooting rampage Friday that left six people dead.

In the kidnapping and robbery incident, officers responded to the hotel after a report of a disturbance in a room, the Santa Monica Police Department said. The hotel is just a few blocks from the pier and Pacific Park.

"Officers observed several suspects fleeing the location on foot" as patrol cars arrived, Sgt. Richard Lewis said in a statement.

He said four suspects were taken into custody and that officers recovered four handguns.

An eruption of violence in Santa Monica on Friday created scenes of terror and despair as a gunman killed five people, then was fatally shot by police. The incident started with a double homicide and house fire in a residential neighborhood and ended at the Santa Monica College library, where...

When a Metrolink train slammed into an SUV on railroad tracks in Glendale a decade ago, the horrific chain reaction wreck prompted a major campaign to improve the safety and security of Southern California grade crossings.

It has beckoned for generations. To California came the Spanish missionaries, the Gold Rush buccaneers, the Dust Bowl refugees, émigrés from the East and the South and other lands, entrepreneurs and hippies and assembly line laborers and farmworkers, all seeking refuge in this...